Project MUSE - William Ranney's Hunting Wild Horses William Ranney's Hunting Wild Horses View full resolution Figure 1. William Ranney, Hunting Wild Horses, 1846, oil on canvas, 36 x 54 ½ inches. Courtesy Museum of the American West, Autry National Center, Los Angeles. [End Page 348] The zoology of the Prairies has probably attracted more attention than any other feature in their natural history," wrote the western chronicler Josiah Gregg in the immensely popular account of his frontier travels, Commerce of the Prairies, in 1844. Leading off a chapter on the animals of the Southwest was what Gregg considered "by far the most noble" of the beasts, the "mustang or wild horse of the Prairies." 1 More than the wily gray wolf, the fleet and nimble antelope, or the ubiquitous buffalo, the wild horse exemplified the venerated notion of freedom on the expansive southwestern grasslands.

America's James Boswell, Washington Irving wrote about his brief tour of that region nearly a decade earlier, championing the wild horse as the "free rover of the prairies" and extolled the innate "pride and freedom of his nature." 2 The Indian painter George Catlin had ridden across the southern plains in 1834 and was, after direct observation, compelled to claim that there existed "no other animal on the prairies so wild and so sagacious as the horse." 3 Yet other observers of the period viewed the mustang from a different perspective, as an exploitable resource and bounty. The Rocky Mountain adventurer Rufus Sage regarded these shaggy animals, which were "frequently encountered four or five hundred head . . . in a single band," among a long list of wild "game," while a travel account by an unknown [End Page 349] author clearly acknowledged their economic potential. According to the account, the mustang might be harvested as a "valuable article of export, as they are innumerable, and cost only the trouble of catching" at some future date.

4 Thus was revealed one of the fundamental paradoxes of the western experience, the contest between the wild, free element and the usable, tamable and marketable commodity. The tension established by these two polar interpretations of the West, along with a complex political environment, are what inform one of the earliest western works by the mid-nineteenth-century painter William Ranney, the large and ambitious oil painting called Hunting Wild Horses of 1846. 5 Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 2. William Ranney, Self Portrait (late), ca. 1855, oil on panel, 8 ¼ x 7 inches. Courtesy a private collection. William Tylee Ranney (1813–1857) is known today for his charmed portraits, his spirited genre scenes, and his compelling historical works. Recognized as a leading figure in the art of mid-nineteenth-century America, he gained special attention for his depictions of the western frontiers. He had experienced the West firsthand as a young man when he served in the Texas war of independence.

6 Later, as an established painter living years [End Page 350] later in West Hoboken, he was still singled out for his western identity. The critic Henry Tuckerman noted that Ranney's studio, for example, formed a startling contrast to most of the peaceful haunts of the same name, in the adjacent metropolis [New York]; it was so constructed as to receive animals; guns, pistols, and cutlasses hung on the walls; and these, with curious saddles and primitive riding gear, might lead a visitor to imagine he had entered a pioneer's cabin or border chieftain's hut: such an idea would, however, have been at once dispelled by a glance at the many sketches and studies which proclaimed that an artist, and not a bush-ranger, had here found a home. 7 About Ranney's western pieces, Tuckerman sensed an especially national flavor. "A more characteristic introduction to genre painting in America can hardly be imagined," the critic opined, concluding that Ranney had struck "a native and promising path." 8 In his large and animated tableau, Hunting Wild Horses, Ranney presents a scene commonly played out on the western plains.

Silhouetted against an expansive sky and very much in close-up view is the dramatic interplay of hunter and hunted. The sweeping, thundering dynamic of the wild herd encircles a spotlighted, fallen horse that has been brought to a crippling halt at the end of a vaquero's rope. The downed white steed crumples forward, its tail jetting behind from the force of its interrupted forward motion. At the other end of the taut rope is the hunter who, leaning back against the jolt, pulls hard with both hands on the reins of his own violently bracing mount. Two other horses dash along the horizon in the distance. All else is steel blue sky and tawny grass plains. It is, as art historian Larry Curry has pointed out, a "rather calculated composition." 9 Ranney attempts to arrest the action and, by centering the composition on the captured horse, brings the viewer's attention to the focal statement of control, while hinting at the sublime, convulsive powers of nature that still lay beyond the reach of this one man and his rawhide lariat.

The tension in the picture, conveyed in the bulging eyes of the horses, both tame and wild, suggests not just the physical exertion and danger to all parties involved but plays equally to the pathos inherent in man's conquest of nature. Poets and fellow artists considered the mustang at once an evanescent form and the purest idea of glorious beauty. The Baltimore painter Alfred Jacob Miller, who rode across the northern prairies in 1837, later recalled their powerful attraction. Among the wild animals of the west, none gave us so much pleasure or caused such excitement as the bands of wild horses that at intervals came under our view. The beauty and symmetry of their forms, their wild and spirited action, long full sweeping [End Page 351] manes and tails, variety of colour, and fleetness of motion, all combined to call forth admiration from the most stoical. 10 Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 3. Alfred Jacob Miller, Wild Horses, c. 1837, pen and ink on paper, 8 ½ x 13 ¼ inches. Courtesy Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Cody, Wyoming, gift of the Coe Foundation, 5.73.

Others bemoaned the capture, claiming that it meant domestication, drudgery, and even death for the hapless victim. In his Narrative of the Texan Santa Fe Expe-dition of 1844, George Wilkins Kendall told of a beautiful white stallion, similarto that pictured in Ranney's painting, having been caught after a hard chase between the headwaters of the Trinity and Brazos Rivers. "He lived but a short time, however, the excessive fatigue of the race causing his death." 11 But it was Irving who most effectively articulated the dismal fortunes of the captured wild horse. When a captive was led into his camp along the Red River one day in 1834, the author, known to be a genre artist in verse, penned the following painterly lament. I could not but look with compassion upon this fine young animal, whose whole course of existence had been so suddenly reversed.

From being a denizen of these vast pastures, ranging at will from plain to plain and mead to mead, cropping of every herb and flower, and drinking of every stream, he was suddenly reduced to perpetual and painful servitude, to pass his life under the harness and the curb, amid, perhaps, the din and dust and drudgery of cities. The transition in his lot was such as sometimes takes place in human affairs, and in the fortunes of towering individuals: one day, a prince of the prairies—the next day, a pack horse! 12 [End Page 352] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 4. Alfred Jacob Miller, Cavalcade, 1839, oil on canvas, 69 x 96 inches. Courtesy State Museum, Oklahoma Historical Society, Oklahoma City. Ranney's scene reflects what Americans were weighing in the ongoing deliberations about the future of the western portion of their country. It speaks also to the fundamental differences between man and nature in the nineteenth-century mind.

Man's history, at least the Euro-American chapters, was a linear construct, symbolized in the rigid postures of the hunter and his trained horse as well as the straight horizontal rawhide link between the man and the fallen steed. Nature, on the other hand, was cyclical. Its patterns flowed in seasonal regularity with anticipated regenerative force. Man intrudes on nature, cuts into the circle, and extracts what he wants. While Ranney's white steed has been captured, other artists of the West presented the opposite interpretation. In 1839, Miller exhibited a monumental history painting, Cavalcade, at New York's Apollo Gallery. Claimed to be the equal of works by the esteemed French history painter Horace Vernet, Cavalcade paraded before the viewer a huge circular sweep of Snake Indians at a rendezvous of the fur trappers in the Rocky Mountains. At the head of the procession was the Snake chief Ma-Wo-Ma astride a prancing white stallion.

The painting's panoramic scale, the march of figures, the monumental presentation of the Indian leader (a representative of America's natural man), and the dignity afforded the narrative were seen by one contemporary reviewer as exemplary of the true "progress of American [End Page 353] art." 13 In the Miller painting, the primary Anglo figure was Capt. William Drummond Stewart, the Scottish adventurer who had taken Miller with him to the rendezvous in 1837. Stewart, pictured in much-reduced scale at one side of the composition, becomes simply an observer of nature's surging momentum and enduring spectacle. Its message would not have been lost on Ranney, who, living in New York at the time of its exhibition, no doubt saw or at least read about this vast tableau of western pomp. Nonetheless, it was not a paradigm that interested Ranney. The moment that intrigued Ranney was not the rich array of nature's nobility so much as the moment of capture and capitulation.

Much has been written by modern scholars about the connection between Hunting Wild Horses and the mythic white steed of the prairies, whose legend was recounted by all manner of writers from travel documentarians like Kendall and epic novelists of Herman Melville's stature. 14 The white steed roamed free and solitary over the northern reaches of Texas. It resisted capture. It evidenced superior form. It was the incarnate emblem of nature beyond man's control. Ranney might well have seen references to the legendary steed in a popular periodical of the day, the United States Magazine and Democratic Review, which published a lengthy poem, "The White Steed of the Prairie," in 1843. The first two and the last of ten stanzas suggest that this horse represented a supreme but illusive prize. Mount, mount for the chase! let your lassos be strong, And forget not sharp spur and tough buffalo thong; For the quarry ye seek hath oft baffled, I ween, Steeds swift as your own, backed by hunters as keen.

Fleet barb of the Prairie, in vain they prepare For thy neck, arched in beauty, the treacherous snare; Thou wilt toss thy proud head, and with nostrils stretched wide, Defy them again, as thou still hast defied. . . . His fields have no fence save the mountain and sky; His drink the snow-capped Cordilleras supply; 'Mid the grandeur of nature sole monarch is he, And his gallant heart swells with the pride of the free. 15 [End Page 354] Ranney's interpretation deviates from this mythic account and somehow seems to be able to reconcile the irony of the white steed's surrender. Art historian Dawn Glanz has suggested that the horse's forced acquiescence will lead to a subsequent degradation of the beast more as Irving had declaimed. She also cites the Homeric myth of the Corinthian prince, Bellerophon, and Pegasus that might have appealed to the youngRanney and be appropriate material for the painting's interpretation. 16 If the white steed's removal into human hands is viewed as serving a larger metaphorical goal, then the notion of potential ruination is subverted.

Pegasus was captured by Bellerophon with the help of a golden bridle given him by Athena, Greek goddess of war. The winged horse then served its master by providing tactical advantage for the hero to destroy and conquer the fire-breathing monster, Chimaera, and a subsequent host of other equally odious adversaries. If the metaphor were extended into Ranney's own day, the painting is pregnant with possible associations. The vaquero is the American Bellerophon and champion of the national will. Athena becomes the James Polk administration with its mandate to annex Texas; the white horse represents Texas, the central metaphorical trophy. Once the horse succumbs, then additional spoils on the political horizon, such as California and Oregon, will yield. In the Ranney portrayal, the horses surrounding the white steed may represent the number of new states that could potentially be carved out of Texas, while the two more distant horses may be the Pacific coast trophies. Ranney's study for the painting, The Lasso, presents only a single quarry, while the later, and larger version features multiple potentials.

This suggests that, as the year 1846 unfolded, the western events multiplied from a single issue into a complex and rather dizzying array of options. 17 While it is not known how Ranney felt about the Mexican War and negotiations with England over Oregon, it is probably safe to assume that given his service in the Texas revolution, he harbored sympathies for Polk's expansionist cause. If so, Ranney counted in the large segment of the American populous who considered that winning Texas was not just the United States' rightful claim of a deserved bounty in the Southwest, but an expression and preservation of democracy itself. The common man (the Texan), they reasoned, was battling against Old World despotism (Mexico). In fact, this movement held broad international political and artistic sway. Take, for example, the American painter Emanuel Leutze, living in Düsseldorf at the time, who was soon to embark on his magnum opus, Washington Crossing the Delaware, as a political statement defending nascent democratic movements in Germany. Hiram Powers's The Greek Slave of 1846 articulated similar [End Page 355] sentiments about the Greek war of independence.

18 Ranney's portrayal of conquest may, in this context, be considered a paean to freedom. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 5. William Ranney, The Lasso, 1846, oil on canvas, 31 ½ x 42 ½ inches. Courtesy Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Cody, Wyoming, gift of Mrs. J. Maxwell Moran, 22.99.1. Like Leutze and Powers, who knew from firsthand what foreign despotism felt and looked like, Ranney constructed his scene from personal observation. A number of American artists found the Mexican War to be an appealing subject. Charles Deas, a contemporary of Ranney's and a soldier in the war, painted several direct views of military life. However, most artists chose to depict the war from afar, showing public reaction to the events rather than the events themselves. Richard Caton Woodville's War News from Mexico and James Goodwyn Clooney's Mexican News present Americans reading accounts of the war in the newspaper. The two men in Clooney's interpretation appear to be relaxed and self-satisfied with the reports they have found in print.

One holds a newspaper and animatedly discusses some element of its contents, while the other lifts a pint of ale in smug deference to some probable announcement of a victory for democracy. The sitters for this anecdotal narrative are passive, third-hand observers of the events. An active player, though symbolic, is Ranney's vaquero—one who determines [End Page 356] the outcome of the actions at hand. Ranney's personal experience in the West and his penchant for outdoor life no doubt motivated such a vigorous treatment. Ranney had probably not only witnessed vaqueros (or "rangers," as they were often called) at work on the prairie but had also recognized the potency of such imagery in the artworks of other fellow recorders of these scenes. The most commonly quoted influence for Ranney's lassoing paintings is Catlin, who depicted Comanches in pursuit of wild horses for his famous Indian Gallery. 19 That vast assemblage of portraits, landscapes, and scenes of daily life enjoyed large audiences in New York during a highly publicized fall exhibition in 1837.

Ranney no doubt joined the crowds and wandered among the several hundred works displayed, admiring Catlin's views of Wild Horses at Play and Lassoing a Wild Horse. Similar scenes were later replicated as plates in Catlin's first book, Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indian of 1841, and as colored lithographs in Catlin's North American Indian Portfolio, published in London in 1844. 20 These volumes and prints circulated widely in the United States. A good number of compositional similarities resonate between Ranney's Hunting Wild Horses and Catlin's Wild Horses at Play, which was also illustrated in Catlin's 1841 book. Catlin's description of what was involved in catching wild horses fits Ranney's painting as well.

The usual mode of taking the wild horses, is by throwing the lasso whilst pursuing them at full speed and dropping a noose over their necks, by which their speed is soon checked, and they are "choked down." The lasso is a thong of raw hide, some ten or fifteen yards in length, twisted or braided with a noose fixed at the end of it; which, when the coil of the lasso is thrown out, drops with great certainty over the neck of the animal, which is soon conquered. Catlin went on to explain that the vaqueros (as pictured in Ranney's work) had learned their trade from the Indians. The "best hunter in these Western regions," according to Catlin, was a Frenchman named Beatte, one of the rangers who served as a guide with the artist on his 1834 southwestern trip and who had grown up among the Osage Indians. He was known for his formidable skills with a lasso and his wiles as a hunter. Irving met the same character a year later and marveled at the spectacle of the "harum-scarum kind of chase" that Beatte led on several occasions in pursuit of wild horses.

Carrying a hunting knife in his belt and wearing a handkerchief tied around his head, he was described as part of a "promiscuous throng" who took on heroic stature as the "pell-mell, hurry-scurry, wild buffalo, [End Page 357] wild horse, wild huntsman, with clang and clatter, and whoop and halloo, that made the forests ring." 21 J. T. Hammond's engraved illustration of such huntsmen, Lazooing a Horse on the Prairie, which appeared in the 1834 travelogue A Visit to Texas, provided additional pictorial antecedent for Ranney's spirited renditions. A few years later, in 1837, an even more closely allied composition was published by the heirs of Davy Crockett in a periodical titled "Go Ahead!," Davy Crockett's Almanack of Wild Sports in the West. A wood engraving called Method of Catching Wild Horses on the Prairies of Texas accompanied an article of the same title. The author discussed the supposed perils represented by wild horses that were known to attack settlers and steal their domesticated horses literally out from under them.

The tamed horses were thus attracted back into the wilds at some considerable loss and discomfort to the settlers. This presented a slightly different variation on the literary theme and afforded a solution, in pictorial terms at least, on how to mitigate the threat. 22 Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 6. Unknown artist, Method of Catching Wild Horses on the Prairies of Texas, 1837, wood engraving, 3 11/16 x 6 ¾ inches. Courtesy St. Louis Mercantile Library. Ranney's Hunting Wild Horses was conceived as a purely American exercise. Despite the fact that it pictured a Tejano horseman, in a symbolic sense it represented a statement of national conquest and Yankee capitalist opportunism. Such a metaphorical assessment may be further certified by the work's early owner. Sometime before 1864 the painting was acquired by New York financier and art collector Marshall O. Roberts. Patron and [End Page 358] art work fit like hand in glove. Roberts, whose fortunes grew to gargantuan proportions by mid-century, had started on his course of success by negotiating important government contracts during the Mexican War.

He was also instrumental in building Texas railroads and in establishing transportation systems that served the California gold rush by providing transport through the Isthmus of Panama. 23 Thus his ties to the West and its rich economic potential provided a natural affinity for Ranney's Texas prairie drama. At the time of his death in 1880, Roberts also owned two other important western genre paintings as part of his sizeable private art collection, Long Jakes by Charles Deas and Woodville's War News from Mexico. 24 Although Roberts was involved in numerous business frauds and scandals, his munificence as an art patron was highly touted. He made his sizeable art collection available to the public like a private museum at no cost and was known to share his art holding in other ways. In the summer of 1864, for example, Roberts loaned Hunting Wild Horses to the Great Central Fair of the United States Sanitary Commission in Philadelphia. It hung there with Albert Bierstadt's stupendous western landscape The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak.

A few years later Bierstadt's vast spread of canvas would be praised not just for its conspicuous scale and its effective rendering of light, shadow and water but for its "signal advantage" of presenting "life in the foreground." 25 Bierstadt's staged figures were Shoshoni Indians. Ranney's had been Beatte or one of his fellow rangers. Bierstadt's narrative told of exotic lifeways. His Indians had just returned from a hunt, harvesting and preparing to nurture themselves on the bounty of the western wilds. Ranney's solo hunter harvests a single mustang, mixing within that capture an elegiac moment of sadness for the wilderness and a triumphant expression of national expansion. By 1852, only six years after Ranney's evocative rendition of wild horse hunting and national expansion, the Boston periodical Gleason's Pictorial featured an article and an accompanying illustration that confirmedthe connection between the two themes. In an essay titled "CatchingWild Horses on a Prairie," the author invited public attention to a "rapturous vision" on the Texas savanna. Here among the "gardens of the desert . . .

, peculiar in beauty and singular in fertility," lay a "paradisiacal scene." To this most alluring of places would be attracted "the adventurous colonist . . . who is, perhaps, the first . . . 'of that advancing multitude, which soon shall fill these deserts' (the Homestead Act would be passed just ten years later).'' Amid a broad array of "graceful deer, bounding buffaloes [End Page 359] and numerous troops of fine and noble wild horses . . . the settler selects his spot; builds himself a dwelling in a shady island, and by conforming to certain requisitions of the government, becomes at once the rightful proprietor of nearly as much territory as his eye can at once survey; and when he finds time to enclose it with substantial landmarks, he feels secure against intrusion. . . . If he wishes a horse or a drove of horses to ride, to travel, to hunt, to work, he has only to ride into the prairie, and the animals cost him only the trouble of catching them.

The horses of Texas are small, run wild in numerous droves over the prairies, and are easily taken and rendered serviceable." 26 Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 7. Unknown artist, Mode of Catching Wild Horses on the Prairies, Texas, 1852, wood engraving,5 ½ x 9 1/8 inches. Courtesy the collection of Peter Hassrick. Although the "embodiment of stirring and hazardous adventure," the securing of wild horses provided the promise of a new life in the West's mythic Eden, where freedom is surrendered by nature to the vanquisher. 27 For the next decade, the West, like the white steed in the painting, was "rendered serviceable" for Ranney. Much of his fame was attributed to his pictorial interpretations of the region and its vital scene. Footnotes Peter H. Hassrick is director of the Institute of Western American Art at the Denver Art Museum.

With Linda Bantel he co-authored Forging an American Identity: The Art of William Ranney, a catalogue of Ranney's works to accompany the exhibit by the same name, which opened at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in May 2006. The exhibit will be at the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth from February 17 to May 13, 2007. 1. Josiah Gregg, Commerce of the Prairies (2 vols.; New York: Henry G. Langlay, 1844), II, 206–207. There is a substantial body of literature about horses in early Texas, including Jack Jackson, Los Mestenos: Spanish Ranching in Texas, 1721–1821 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1986) and Terry G. Jordan, North American Cattle-Ranching Frontiers: Origins, Diffusion, and Differentiation (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993). 2. Washington Irving, A Tour on the Prairies (Philadelphia: Carey, Lea amp; Blanchard, 1835), 155.

3. George Catlin, Illustrations of the Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians . . . (2 vols.; London: Henry G. Bohn, 1857), II, 57. 4. Rufus B. Sage, Scenes in the Rocky Mountains (Philadelphia: Carey and Hart, 1846), 313, and unknown author, A Visit to Texas (New York: Van Nostrand and Dwight, 1836), 48. 5. Scholars have generally believed this to be Ranney's first finished and dated western painting. See, for example, Linda Ayres, "William Ranney," in Ron Tyler, et al., American Frontier Life: Early Western Painting and Prints (New York: Abbeville Publishers, 1987), 84. However, Emigrants Resting, exhibited at the Brooklyn Institute in 1845, was probably western in theme, and The Dead Charger of 1846 explored a Mexican War subject. 6. For a full description of Ranney's involvement in Texas, see Ayres, "William Ranney," 80. 7.

Henry Tuckerman, Book of the Artists (New York: G. P. Putman amp; Son, 1867), 431–432. All the Missing Horses: What Happened to the Wild Horses Tom Davis Bought From the Gov’t? - ProPublica ProPublica Journalism in the Public Interest Receive our top stories daily optional Cancel All the Missing Horses: What Happened to the Wild Horses Tom Davis Bought From the Gov’t? The main buyer from a federal program designed to protect wild horses is a Colorado man who advocates slaughter. He’s bought more than 1,700 since 2009, but won’t say where they are. A lone mustang who escaped the helicopters watches a Bureau of Land Management roundup in the Stone Cabin Valley in Nevada during the winter of 2012. (Dave Philipps) by Dave Philipps, Special to ProPublica, Sep. 28, 2012, 3:13 p.m.

Saving Wild Horses - Colorado Magazine Online v According to information posted on the Bureau of Land Management ‘s website as of December 2008, it estimates that the current free-roaming population of 29,500 horses and 3,500 burros in 10 Western states exceeds by approximately 5,700 the number they have determined can exist in balance with other public rangeland resources and uses. According the BLM, the manageable level is 27,300 animals. Jill Anderson, Director of Development & Communications at the Return to Freedom, American Wild Horse Sanctuary points out that over 6 million private livestock graze on public lands. She states that to claim the land can sustain 6 million cattle, but not 29,500 horses, "flies in the face of common sense," and further notes that the BLM continues to claim an overpopulation of wild horses, "without any sound science, census data, or range studies to base this assumption on." The number has been arrived at by a wild horse advisory board that is comprised largely of livestock ranchers, who have a vested interest in how the land is used. Virginia L.

Parant of the American Wild Horses Preservation Campaign, a coalition of about 45 groups, also claims that the BLM does not use a scientifically sound method to estimate the size of horse herds or the number of horses that can be sustained on the range. “That makes the roundups arbitrary,” she said. Horse advocates say findings of federal officials are tilted in favor of cattle interests, who claim that wild horses compete with cattle and wildlife for food and water. According to Jeff Eisenberg, director of federal lands for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, an industry-lobbying group, livestock people don't particularly seek euthanization, rather they seek management of the population. The future of wild horses is becoming more tenuous now, as the Congress doesn't want to put more funding into the holding facilities, especially when the economy is in trouble. To further exacerbate the situation, the pace of adoptions has been falling as the cost of feeding and caring for the wild horses has skyrocketed, and to make the situation even more serious, about 19 million acres of land where wild horses once roamed have been removed from the program, which has minimized the amount of land previously available to wild horses.

A report released by the Government Accountability Office called the situation a "crisis" and said the BLM needed to exercise its options, including euthanasia and the practice of selling the wild horses "without restriction," meaning they could be sold for slaughter. Shelley Sawhook, president of the American Horse Defense Fund has said policymakers have to resolve the conflict between a law that permits euthanasia and a nation that is opposed to it. Animal rights groups want the government to sterilize horses and return them to the wild to live out their lives. They say, it should offer tax incentives to landowners who allow wild horses to live on private land. On a more humane side of BLM operations, there are people who are concerned about the Mustangs, such as Billie Hutchings, who is a volunteer worker on BLM lands in the Book Cliff wild horse area. She loves the Mustangs and cares about their welfare. As a volunteer, Billie says, “ it’s part of my job to track the herds and notice when mares change bands, when new foals are born, and when horses change areas or disappear. We have names for all of the horses - they have been tracked for many years.

There is a lady here, known as the "Wild Horse Lady" of the Book Cliffs. She has been watching the horses, who roam here, for the past 30 years. That’s why we can tell which horses are the sires of the foals and know the age of each horse. Billie is a member of a local club, called, Friends of the Mustangs, which is a volunteer group for the BLM. They help the BLM with many tasks on the range. Billie said they keep the range free of trash and barb wire, fix fences and water tanks, and take care of anything else that needs to be done. They also participate in roundups,” which she said are now called “gathers.” The club also helps to decide on the names for new foals.” The Friends of the Mustangs club has a web site at: Billie has a blog in which she describes her trips to the range at: spaces.msn.com/wildhorsefever. She also places her many wonderful photos of wild horses on both her blog and on her Flickr site photo pages, at: She said she is on foot when she photographs the horses.

She explained, “Sometimes they are not easy to find and we do a fair amount of hiking to get to them, but it is worth every minute!” Billie said her feelings about her experiences on the range with wild Mustangs are pretty much summed up by one of her favorite quotes by John Burroughs, "I go to nature to be soothed and healed and to have my senses put in order.” Regarding the harsh realities of the politics which surround the wild horses, Billies added, “The horses don't understand the politics of the whole deal, they just live each day free as they have for many years.” There are a number of organizations and individuals dedicated to saving wild horses, among which is the Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary in Hot Springs, South Dakota. It was founded by Oregon rancher, naturalist, and author, Dayton O. Hyde in 1988, after he convinced the Bureau of Land Management to send him its unadoptable wild horses. Foals at play, at the Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary Funded by The Institute of Range and American Mustang (IRAM), it owns 11,000 acres of private land, which are dedicated to range preservation and a balanced ecosystem.

The Sanctuarys, purpose is to provide space where unadoptable and unwanted wild horses can run free and live quality, protected lives. Over the past twenty years, its herd has grown to between 400- 450 wild horses. Operated by a staff of volunteers, the sanctuary is also involved in research devoted to understanding wild horse herd management problems and to the development of solutions, which may contribute to the well-being of all wild horses. The public is invited to the sanctuary, which Hyde describes as a, “grassland home of rocky canyons, wind swept prairies and dark pine forests, where coyotes, cougar, white-tail and mule deer, elk, wild turkeys, eagles and falcons share the land with the wild horses, who roam free here.” Visit the Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary website at: Another organization that saves horses - both domestic and wild is Colorado Horse Rescue, located in Longmont, Colorado. It is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing shelter, emergency relief, care, rehabilitation, and adoption services for abused, abandoned, neglected and unwanted horses. CHR also provides community resources through equine education, counseling, information and referral services.

The organization is funded through individual donations, grants, bequests and corporate sponsorships. Visit Colorado Horse Rescue’s website at: Return to Freedom, in Lompoc, California is a non-profit wild horse sanctuary founded in 1997 by Neda DeMayo, dedicated to preserving the freedom, diversity and habitat of America's wild horses through sanctuary, education and conservation. Wild Horses run free at the Return to Freedom Sanctuary. Rounded up from the Sulphur Springs Herd Management Area in Utah, the Sulphurs possess DNA that is genetically similar to the primitive Iberian Sorraia. It is believed that there are fewer than 60 left in the wild. This is just one of the rare genetic strains of America’s wild horses that is in danger of becoming extinct in the wild. Tony Stromberg photo Return to Freedom provides a safe haven sanctuary for nearly 200 wild horses and burros recognizing that wild horses live in tightly bonded herd groups, Return to Freedom became the first sanctuary with a focus on rescuing entire family bands. Designed to be a model program, the sanctuary implements alternative and minimally intrusive management philosophies.

Visit the website at: Neda DeMayo, Return to Freedom's founder notes, "America's wild horses have survived centuries of change as industry and urbanization have decreased our open spaces and wilderness areas. They have been relegated to the most inhospitable areas of our western landscape, as private livestock lay claim to our public lands. And yet they have adapted. If we allow the wild horse to disappear form the wild, and scatter the remaining herds to barns and backyards around the country, we will interrupt hundreds of years of an evolutionary journey. If we allow this to happen, the wild horse will eventually become extinct in the wild and we will lose something that we can never get back." The rugged life of the only wild horse herd remaining in the state of Montana and the threat to its existence is documented in two PBS films by Emmy Award winning filmmaker and author, Ginger Kathrens. "Once there were other herds in Montana," remarked Kathrens, "but like so many of our herds, they're gone now." Kathrens’ two films and books document the story about Cloud, a beautiful pale palomino stallion and his band of majestic Mustangs, who roam the Pryor Mountains in Montana. She has filmed him from birth.

Kathrens’ third Cloud program, “Cloud: Challenge of the Stallions,” will premier on PBS this Fall 2009 and her latest book will be published this summer. Cloud One of Cloud's sons, Flint, a bachelor stallion. Photos by Ginger Kathrens Kathrens and others formed The Cloud Foundation in 2005. TCF is dedicated to preserving Cloud's famous herd and other wild horse herds in the west. "We've lost 40% of our wild horses just in the past eight years," Kathrens comments. "19.4 million acres have been taken away from wild horses, even though these lands were designated as their homes in the early 1970s. If we don't act quickly we could lose our wild horses forever." Visit the Cloud Foundation at: on PBS's Nature Series. Kathrens points out that the recent GAO report confirmed there are currently more wild horses living in government holding facilities than in the wild. "The healthiest of these captive mustangs deserve a chance to roam free again," she states.

"Releasing the wild horses back on the millions of acres once designed for their use is the cheapest and kindest way to avoid euthanasia by the BLM." "We need to step back, take a deep breath, and embark on a new path in regard to wild horse and public land management issues," Kathrens concludes. "If we are to restore wild horse herds to self-sustaining levels we need to look at retiring livestock grazing permits on wild horse herd areas, removing the many miles of restrictive fencing, protecting predators that can keep wild horse herds in balance with the land, and improving western ranges devastated by more than a century of over grazing by livestock." Another film company, Voluntary Instinct Productions, has also produced a series of provocative documentary films, directed by Robyn Day, which expose the mistreatment and plight of wild horses in America. Visit these links to view the films: Carol Walker, author and wildlife photographer has also taken up the fight to save wild horses. When she began photographing wild horses four years ago, she followed several herds in Wyoming, Colorado and Montana and became aware of how precarious their situation on public lands has become. Since then, she has dedicated herself to educating people with her photographs and stories about wild horses.

She has written an excellent photographically illustrated book, Wild Hoofbeats, America’s Vanishing Wild Horses, which describes the characteristics and lives of wild horses and deals with the tangled political issues surrounding their welfare and very existence. Her book explores how the BLM’s has mismanaged its responsibility to protect them and implores American citizens to take action to stop the massive removals of the already declining wild horse population in our country. Carol states, “America’s magnificent wild horses represent our heritage as symbols of freedom and they are the last living icons of the old West. Their ability to survive against all odds should be cheered and they should be prized, not destroyed!” Carol has traveled all over the world photographing wildlife for the past 28 years and her wild horse photographs offer vivid images of America’s precious heritage. Wild Hoofbeats is available in bookstores and from Carol's website at: Another notable effort to save wild horses is being made by Madeleine Pickens, the wife of billionaire T. Boone Pickens. Lifelong animal lovers, the Pickenses, a few years ago, led the fight to close the last horse slaughterhouse in the United States.

Historically, 100,000 horses a year had been slaughtered. Madeleine is currently in the process of developing major plans to adopt, not just the doomed wild horses but most or all of the 30,000 horses and burros being kept in federal holding pens.” Outraged by the BLM’s inhumane handling of wild horses, Pickens said, "Can you imagine somebody suggesting that you euthanize 30,000 horses? It is an abominable idea!" She added, "That will never happen.” She wants to move the threatened horses from the holding pens to a one million acre wild horse sanctuary somewhere in the west. She is currently researching land options and working with the BLM staff to adopt the horses." She said, “Although there will always be the need for some short term holding for gathering, the idea with this sanctuary is that it will alleviate the BLM of all the costs of gathering the horses and placing them in holding pens.” After they are gathered and vaccinated or neutered, they would be brought to the sanctuary, where we would take control and manage them.

Madeleine Pickens pointed out an example of a sad situation at a short term holding facility in Fallon, Nevada. “At the holding facilities there, she said, “Horses are packed tightly together in holding pens and although the horses are only supposed to be held there for three months, some have been there for three years now. In long term holding, however,” she continued, “the horses are on the range but they don’t need the be there, they need to be roaming free.” She estimates that there are 8,000 to 10,000 horses generally kept in short term holding and noted that there is currently no more room to gather more. What is a roundup experience like for Mustangs? The following is excerpted from a story by Christy Lattin, which describes a BLM roundup in , Fallon, Nevada, published in the Lahontan Valley News, December 22, 2006. “The horses are rounded up by helicopter and taken to holding corrals in the Clan Alpine Mountains. There they are sorted into studs, mares and mares with colts. The three groups are loaded onto single-deck livestock trailers in separate compartments with 33 to 36 horses per trailer.

The longest duration Nevada horses are transported is seven to eight hours. If they're headed back east, the law limits travel time to 20 hours before rest is mandatory. When the horses arrive at the feedlot, they are sorted by age and sex and given a freeze brand, wormed and vaccination. The studs are gelded, or castrated, after arrival. Mares aren't permanently sterilized but are given an immuno-contraceptive shot, which prevents colting for two years. Mares who are given the shot can be released back into the wild. Care is a combined effort between the BLM and the contractor, which in Fallon is Gary Snow. The contractor runs the facility and handles feeding and watering the animals while the BLM administers the contract, ensures the horses are fed, secures veterinary services and vaccinates the horses. Horses are supposed to only remain in holding facilities four to five months, "but the adoption demand is not there. There are some horses that were born here three years ago," _________________ Madeleine said she is currently in the process of looking for land on which to establish her sanctuary.

She said she has to find land that is attached to the BLM, “so we can get the same cost benefits as the cattlemen have enjoyed for all these years.” One of the problems in finding appropriate land," she explained, “is that if the land already has a horse herd on it, the BLM would have to change the rules to allow the existing herd to continue to graze free on the land, without being neutered. The neutered horses we would bring in would be separated by fences.” She further elaborated, “Some of the other parcels we are looking at are just for cattle grazing, therefore, we can’t purchase any land until we know if the BLM is going to agree to convert it to use for horses.” The news that Pickens and others intend to adopt the wild horses and burros was cheered by animal rights groups, several of which have been preparing legal challenges to prevent the government from putting wild horses to death.

Madeleine said her sanctuary plans should have been in operation by now, “but nothing in the government moves fast.” She has asked the BLM if it would cooperate, if she can find a ranch that could sustain the horses, and she asked if they would convert the ranch land’s use from cattle grazing to horse grazing. “They liked that idea,” she said, “but former BLM Deputy Director Henry Bisson, with whom we have been working, has retired and we now have to wait for the new director of the BLM to come on board and sanction the deal.” She added, “The cost has become prohibitive for the government and by the year 2012, it will cost $85 million a year to care for the animals they have taken off the range.” Madeleine said she has met with Senators Feinstein, Landreaux and Harry Reid, “who all want a resolution to this issue.” She added, “They all three recognize the current situation is one, which can’t go on and that the American people will not put up with it. The legislators know they have to be involved in this situation.

And, the BLM’s responsibility will not be excused just because we take the horses.” “Our plans call for an ongoing program of gathering horses, which will provide a solution to the handling of that responsibility by the BLM.” Asked if she thought the Obama administration would be favorable to this solution, Madeleine replied, “I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t,” and she added, “All Americans know that this country was founded on horseback and that heritage needs to be remembered and cherished.” It remains to be seen if Ken Salazar, the new Secretary of the Interior will support this solution. Madeleine has not yet met with him but she plans to, “after he has put all of his people in place.” She feels confident, “that he will do the right thing and come on board with this program.” Madeleine noted, “The former Senator Conrad Burns’ amendment to lift the band on the slaughter of wild horses, which was a hideous thing, is still in force. The 2009 Conyers-Burton bill HR 503 is an equine cruelty transportation bill, which we hope will pass.

Even though the slaughter houses are closed, horses bought at auction are being taken to Mexico to be slaughtered...it’s just dreadful what they are doing.” Madeleine Pickens For more information on Madeleine Picken's project, visit her Web site: Also see the 2008 ABC News Person of the Week: Madeleine Pickens report and video, at: New legislation has been introduced to prevent the slaughter of all American horses, including wild and domestic horses - in the form of the Conyers-Burton Prevention of Equine Cruelty Act of 2009 (HR 503 IH), by House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI), Representative Dan Burton (R-IN) and many of their colleagues. The bill prohibits the slaughter of American horses for human consumption as well as their export for the same purpose, but nothing about the slaughter of wild horses for use of pet food is mentioned in the bill. Story edited from information gathered from the web, from the BLM, from information provided by people concerned with saving wild horses, and from interviews.

Top Cruel Legislation In December 2004, then Montana Republican Senator, Conrad Burns - defeated in his re-election -slipped a last minute amendment onto the 2005 Omnibus Appropriations Bill - known as the Burns rider - that "reversed a 34-year-old ban on selling wild horses and burros for slaughter - animals that had been protected by the government since 1971. This one-page rider - No. 142 - was part of a 4,000 page bill. There were no hearings or debate on this amendment, submitted on the eve of the vote. At the time, Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-KY) said, “The thing that is so damaging about this Conrad Burns amendment is that he passed it on an appropriations bill that no one knew about. The Bureau of Land Management ‘s concern was that the herds were depleting land where privately owned cattle also graze. As a result of the amendment, the bureau was authorized to round up and sell thousands of these horses.

In spite of assurances from the BLM that it would sell horses only to owners with an interest in their welfare, some of the horses were slaughtered for their meat - which was shipped overseas. In 2005, the Rahall/Whitfield Wild Horse Amendment would have repudiated the Burns rider and reaffirmed the prohibition on BLM selling protected wild horses and burros for slaughter. It passed the House but was blocked in the Senate by the appropriations subcommittee for the Department of the Interior - chaired by Senator Burns. New legislation has been introduced to prevent the slaughter of wild horses in the form of the Conyers-Burton Prevention of Equine Cruelty Act of 2009 (HR 503 IH ), by House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI), Representative Dan Burton (R-IN) and many of their colleagues. The bill to prohibits the slaughter of American horses for human consumption as well as their export for the same purpose, however, nothing about the slaughter of wild horses for use of pet food is included in the bill. Top The Brutality of A BLM Wild Horse Roundup by Author, Carol Walker I was at the Sand Wash, Colorado roundup for media day.

I could clearly sense the terror the horses felt as they were being pushed and herded by a helicopter, then forcibly separated from their families. The day after media day on October 19, 2008, the horses were first driven into one capture area, then they were driven into a smaller pen, then driven through a very narrow passage between two panels into a horse trailer. Two catastrophes happened, while the panicked horses were being herded in crowded groups of over 15. The roundup cowboys were driving them - waving flags and yelling. It was far too large a group of horses to be pushed through such a small passage. In the two incidents, horses went up and over the railings and fell, crushed by other horses. In the case of the second incident, a grey mare went up and over and fell down. She was trapped partially under the trailer, while the other terrified horses ran over her head and body. The cowboys just stood there doing nothing for at least 5 minutes. The other horses were standing on and walking over this poor mare's head and body for at least 15 minutes before she was able to very shakily get up... then they drove her into the trailer.

After this happened, the cowboys worked much more slowly and drove the horses into the trailer in smaller groups. These accidents were very preventable.The only reason they occurred was carelessness on the part of the crew and a total lack of concern for the welfare of the horses. The BLM continues to fail to enforce humane handling procedures. Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary The Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary Dayton O. Hydes heart beats along with the thunder of hooves across the prairie. His mission is to provide a place where wild horses roam free - safe from starvation, safe from thirst, safe from their cruelest predator: man. In 1988, he founded the Institute of Range and the American Mustang (IRAM), a non-profit organization that owns the 11,000-acre Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary southwest of Hot Springs in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The Sanctuary is home to about 350 mustangs - the horses the BLM adoption program couldnt give away - the old, the marred and the homely.

Hyde, now in his middle 70s, began a love affair with the mustang as a teen, on his uncles Oregon ranch, helping catch and train wild horses. Ater serving in World War II and completing college, Hyde bought his uncles ranch, but the mustangs were gone. He took up ranching and raising a family - and environmentalism long before it became fashionable. He has written 18 books. "Sandy," published in 1968 about efforts to restore Sandhill crane populations, became a model for the whooping crane restoration effort. "Don Coyote" (1986) de-villainized the plains predator and provided a lot of the money needed to start his sanctuary. In 1986, Hyde saw hundreds of unwanted mustangs crammed into a Bureau of Land Management feedlot in Nevada, and the idea for a sanctuary was born. In 1988, with the help of then-Gov. George Mickelson, Hyde found the perfect place for mustangs in southwestern South Dakota in 11,000 acres of rugged range on the Cheyenne River between Hot Springs and Edgemont.

The Sanctuary raises funds via guided tours, chuckwagon dinners, sponsorship kits, and donations. The sanctuary includes Guided Mustang Tours from Memorial Day through Labor Day, featuring not only wild horses, but also wildflowers, other wildlife, western history, geology and ancient Indian petroglyphs. In 1995, Ted Turner's production company brought more than 300 actors and crew to the Sanctuary for six weeks to shoot the movie "Crazy Horse." The $300,000 movie replica of Fort Robinson, which originally was located about 60 miles south, has become another tourist attraction for the refuge.

Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary Home American mustangs gallop across June's wildflowers June ushered in plains heat, dust whirled across the range Prayers for rain went unanswered, this was not strange Angus calves arrived by the dozens in the morning haze Calves were branded, colts gelded, all in a daze Hot dry dusty summer air filled with flies and aroma of dung The pastures and hills soon filled with all species of young coyotes and mountain lions roamed rocky cliffs Turkeys, magpies, swallows, bluebirds and yellow finches galore June led to summer, July's heat set upon dust storms, no rain, who could ask for more Long weeks of gritty heat dragged through August, was fall nearby?

Wild mustangs grazing on hay in winter Dawn rises over hungry horses all in a row Watching and listening intently for trucks bringing hay and oats Icicles hung from their chins, a dusting of snow on their backs Yet they run and cavort and skate across the ice Which we chop daily from the water troughs Mid-January now and a tad of a thaw But by weeks' end temps will drop and so will more snow So we prepare for a touch more winter and long for the spring Monochrome April will look so good. Rick Brothers is a full-time Sanctuary tour interpreter and ranch staffer who came to us after many years in the tourism and travel industry.

Question: What name is given to the wild horse of the American prairie
Answer: Mustang